Netflix announces fourth annual Geeked Week coming in September
Netflix
Netflix has just announced it is holding its fourth annual Geeked Week, starting Sept. 16 and “culminating with a live, in-person fan event” in Atlanta on the evening of Sept. 19.
The streaming giant notes it will be the first time its celebration of nerd-friendly titles — from live-action shows like Squid Game, Stranger Things, Wednesday and Avatar: The Last Airbender to anime titles including Cowboy Bebop and Neon Genesis Evangelion — will be live.
More details on the week of programming will be released in the coming weeks, but last year’s celebration saw the streaming service debut a slew of new trailers, teases for video games and celebrity interviews.
Netflix has dropped the official trailer for Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, the second installment in Ryan Murphy‘s Monsters series.
The series, per Netflix, “explores the complex dynamics within the Menendez family, and whether the brothers were troubled individuals acting out of fear and desperation due to years of abuse, or calculating killers driven by financial gain and greed.”
In one scene, Javier Bardem’s José Menendez uses the example of a dog leash with a spiked collar to explain to his son Lyle, played by Nicholas Chavez, how pain can be used to teach it how to obey.
“Some people think those collars are cruel. But I think it’s the other collars that are cruel, ’cause they create dogs that misbehave,” he says. “I think I didn’t hit you hard enough.”
Later, Kitty Menendez, portrayed by Chloë Sevigny, reveals, “I hate my kids.” She claims they’ve turned her and her husband into parasites, and even goes as far as expressing that hatred to their faces.
“I regret having you,” she snaps. “I could have been a movie star like Kim Novak. And you’re what I got?”
Lyle and his brother, Erik —played by Cooper Koch — were convicted in 1996 of murdering José and Kitty.
Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story debuts Sept. 19 on Netflix.
It’s time to delve deeper into the psyche of The Batman villain The Penguin. The new series The Penguin debuts Thursday on HBO.
It takes place in the universe of Robert Pattinson‘s The Batman, and show creator Lauren LeFranc tells ABC Audio that its themes go way beyond the criminal in the comic books.
She says, “There’s a lot of themes about, you know, family and trauma and masculinity, and really a deeper examination overall as to what makes a monster and why do we engage with people who might be charming, but also really problematic and have darker sides to themselves.”
LeFranc says the series picks up a week after the events of The Batman, with a damaged Gotham City flooded as a result of The Riddler blowing up the seawall.
“Carmine Falcone, you know, very large, larger-than-life crime boss in The Batman, is dead,” she continues. “And that has sort of created a power vacuum. And Oz Cobb, played by Colin Farrell, seeks to fill it.”
What you won’t see in The Penguin is Pattinson’s Batman, which LeFranc hopes won’t be that big of a deal.
“I totally understand why people would want to see Batman or think that they would want to see Batman. You know, to me, I hope by the end of our show people don’t feel that way. They feel like we’ve serviced really interesting, engaging characters and that this show can stand on its own in that regard,” she shares.
Adds LeFranc, “I mean, of course we’re taking place in the same universe where Batman exists. The thing Matt (Reeves) and I would always say is that Batman is just a man, you know, and he can’t be everywhere. He doesn’t have Spidey sense, you know?”
The final episode of season 4 of The Boys may have been a downer, but it ended on a very high note.
ABC Audio has learned that the fourth installment of the show attracted 55 million viewers worldwide, according to Prime Video, and reached #1 in 170 countries.
Overall, viewership for the fourth season of the Emmy-nominated series based on Garth Ennis and Darick Robertson‘s bestselling comic book series is up 20% versus the third.
Interestingly, for all the skewering the show did about American politics this season, 60% of the audience was in other countries, with strong performances in the U.K., Canada, Brazil, India, Germany, Italy, France, Mexico and Spain, according to the streamer.
